Regional planning in India

Although a few books dealing with some specialised aspects of regional planning have appeared in India, there has been no systematic treatment of the subject from the teaching angle, embracing the whole field of regional planning, drawing attention to the work done by Indian scholars and focusing on Indian problems. The present book is an attempt in this direction. The authors have put together most of the existing theoretical and empirical literature on regional planning in India. Conceived thus, the book fills in an important gap in the area. The coverage is comprehensive and exhaustive. Considerable pains have been taken in evaluating the work of Indian authors and practically every important contribution has been cited. This is evident from the rich bibliographical references at the end of every chapter.
Since the book was sponsored by the University Grants Commission under its "Preparations of University Level Books by Indian Authors" scheme, the style adopted is simple. lucid and direct. The 12 chapters of the book, besides dealing with the concepts, methods and techniques of regional planning, have been devoted to specific problems in regional development such as regional imbalances and inequalities, the process of urbanisation, rural development, backward area development and tribal development. This provides the necessary orientation to the directions in which regional planning is relevant. The third chapter devoted to a critical appraisal of the planning strategy in India succinctly points out how the neglect of regional and spatial aspects of planning has restricted the usefulness of the whole planning experiment in this country. Inter-regional resources allocation problem, multi-level planning and importance of social and environmental issues in regional planning are also discussed.